Bungie Reveals What Will Happen to Characters in 'Destiny 2'

Think 'Mass Effect' with legacy perks typical of Bungie.

Bungie has confirmed exactly how characters from Destiny will relate to a given player’s experience in the sequel, and the short explanation is that it will work pretty similarly to how you once imported your version of Commander Shepard in the Mass Effect trilogy.

You might remember that in Mass Effect, you designed the face of your own custom Shepard, gender and all (or opted for the default), and that face carried from game to game along with all of your mistakes, decisions, and relationships. Despite that, you more or less got a hard reset as far as skills and equipment (which made a lot of sense given the plot setup of Mass Effect 2). Now, Bungie has announced implicitly that porting characters from Destiny into Destiny 2 will be much the same. You’ll keep whatever face spent 90 percent of its time hidden under a helmet, but all of your class progress, gear, and powers will remain forever trapped in the original Destiny.

The announcement comes attached to a notice from developers about “Age of Triumph,” which will be the final live event of the game, celebrating the three years of grinding, raiding, and cursing the RNG gods for never giving you that one exotic you really wanted. With regards to characters moving forward into Destiny 2, Bungie had the following to say:

Sequels represent the start of a new adventure for every player, with new worlds to explore, new stories to tell, new powers to acquire, new loot to earn, and much more. This led us to a decision that would enable us to serve both the game and the player’s best interests: Destiny 1 power, possessions, and Eververse-related items and currency will not carry forward. They will, however, remain accessible to you in Destiny 1.

We know that, just like us, you have grown fond of the Guardians you’ve created, so we do plan to preserve your character personalization. We are going to recognize the dedication and passion you’ve shown for this world. Specifically, the class, race, gender, face, hair, and marking selections for all characters that have achieved Level 20 and completed the Black Garden story mission will carry forward. We also plan to award those veteran accounts with honors that reflect your Destiny 1 accomplishments.

Those “honors” will no doubt be something along the lines of shaders and emblems exclusive to veteran players, but we wouldn’t be surprised if they sweetened the pot with a legendary or exotic engram of some kind.

We’ll know more about “Age of Triumph” with the Wednesday announcement, but they’re likely going to tie in or be similar to the “Moments of Triumph” achievement items included in previous celebrations of Destiny Year 1 and 2 where players could defeat certain bosses and earn exclusive rewards.

There’s no known release timeline for Destiny 2, but developers did say that they are “looking forward to sharing more details” later in 2017 about the upcoming sequel.